Arondite wrote: simonsez wrote: GothicKratos wrote: The alternative is letting characters like 4* Thor, X-Force, Hood, Captain America, etc etc completely trivialize PvE. No reason why this is the only alternative. You can have scaling that doesn't necessarily try to level the playing field. Sure, make it more challenging because I'm running XF/GT, but not to the point where I'm playing on an equal footing with someone that has a 2* roster. There needs to be a PvE benefit to playing hard and developing a good roster. A good argument can be made that, in PvE, you're supposed to be on equal footing with the 2 star players.
simonsez wrote: GothicKratos wrote: The alternative is letting characters like 4* Thor, X-Force, Hood, Captain America, etc etc completely trivialize PvE. No reason why this is the only alternative. You can have scaling that doesn't necessarily try to level the playing field. Sure, make it more challenging because I'm running XF/GT, but not to the point where I'm playing on an equal footing with someone that has a 2* roster. There needs to be a PvE benefit to playing hard and developing a good roster.
GothicKratos wrote: The alternative is letting characters like 4* Thor, X-Force, Hood, Captain America, etc etc completely trivialize PvE.
Colognoisseur wrote: My levels were mostly in the high 200's for the great majority of Iso-8 Brotherhood which was, in my opinion, worth it. Having opponents in the 280-300 range allows for more flexibility. As to the way I did my grinding. In every sub I had grinded down every node to baseline and finished by playing the highest non-essential five times. If the hypothesis that scaling was going to go through the roof by the time I reached that node it should have been well over 300 except it wasn't. Even grinding it five times didn't get it over 300. I would then finish with the two hard Deadpool Essentials. By the time I got to the hardet non-essential I had finished 25 figts in the easy sub and ten fights in the hard sub. I am playing the event the way I want to with more versatile lineups because it makes it more fun for me. That it also has a side benefit of keeping my scaling lower that's good too.
Phantron wrote: Colognoisseur wrote: My levels were mostly in the high 200's for the great majority of Iso-8 Brotherhood which was, in my opinion, worth it. Having opponents in the 280-300 range allows for more flexibility. As to the way I did my grinding. In every sub I had grinded down every node to baseline and finished by playing the highest non-essential five times. If the hypothesis that scaling was going to go through the roof by the time I reached that node it should have been well over 300 except it wasn't. Even grinding it five times didn't get it over 300. I would then finish with the two hard Deadpool Essentials. By the time I got to the hardet non-essential I had finished 25 figts in the easy sub and ten fights in the hard sub. I am playing the event the way I want to with more versatile lineups because it makes it more fun for me. That it also has a side benefit of keeping my scaling lower that's good too. Wait, so you only did ten fights in hard? I'm pretty sure each sub's scaling is independent (beating normal won't increase hard and vice versa) so if that's all you did of course your scaling should be lower than mine. I often had hard and normal both down to 1 point so that's 6 clears on each node (if you clear 5 times the nodes will still have about 15-30 points left over) so of course I should have higher scaling. I didn't pay attention to how normal was scaling since the numbers are irrelevent compared to my roster. I didn't clear that much by choice. That was what it took to fend off my bracket for the top 2, especially since I know I was going to very poorly in the last two days. For the last two days where I barely had enough time to clear, my scaling was quite low too. I see nothing that can't be explained between your scaling and mine just based on the number of nodes cleared. I'm sure there are times I have 25+ nodes cleared in hard when I hit the hardest non essential again. By the way, I know this isn't a good way to manage scaling, but I'm also trying to set the pace difficult for anyone with lower scaling than me (either they have to do the same thing and mess up their scaling, or they end up being the pace setter), and again that's not really a 'by choice' thing. The bracket was just that hard to force me to have to do this kind of stuff.
Colognoisseur wrote: No I had cleared all six levels once at the sub opening. I cleared all five levels at full refresh and then in the final grind I cleared the first two hard non-essential levels down to baseline. So that is a total of six plus five plus ten for 21 clears in the hard sub before playing it five times in a row before moving on to the essentials. At which point it still wasn't over 300. If you're playing by grinding essentials before the non-essentials no wonder you had to fend off other players you were leaving points on the table by not taking advantage of the higher points from the essentials.
Phantron wrote: Colognoisseur wrote: No I had cleared all six levels once at the sub opening. I cleared all five levels at full refresh and then in the final grind I cleared the first two hard non-essential levels down to baseline. So that is a total of six plus five plus ten for 21 clears in the hard sub before playing it five times in a row before moving on to the essentials. At which point it still wasn't over 300. If you're playing by grinding essentials before the non-essentials no wonder you had to fend off other players you were leaving points on the table by not taking advantage of the higher points from the essentials. I did one clear at start and in the final 4 hours I clear every node 6-7 times (1, 5/6, 4/6, 3/6, 2/6, 1/6, and sometimes one more for whatever the node regenerated in the time I spent playing) so that's a total of 36-41 nodes on hard, so given that I beat way more nodes than you, I'm not particularly convinced that your lower scaling isn't the result of just playing less nodes overall since scaling clearly goes up the more nodes you clear. I also cleared the nodes in a fairly maximally not-optimal manner in order to attempt to destroy my competitor's scaling (either they need to match it to destroy their scaling or they'll be forced to be the pace setter and overtake me and then I get to watch their moves instead). I made no attempt to try to keep scaling managed and I think my extra scaling can be explained entirely by the extra nodes I did. No that wasn't a strategy to keep scaling manageable but because I had at least two guys that was clearing everything close to 1 as well that's what I had to do to keep my lead.
Colognoisseur wrote: I did a total of one clear at six nodes at the start. One clear at five nodes at the 8h refresh and five each of the five nodes in the final grind for 36 nodes per hard sub for every hard sub. So at best you played five more nodes per hard sub for single digit points. If you think that those five clears are responsible for the difference in our scaling so be it.
Phantron wrote: Colognoisseur wrote: I did a total of one clear at six nodes at the start. One clear at five nodes at the 8h refresh and five each of the five nodes in the final grind for 36 nodes per hard sub for every hard sub. So at best you played five more nodes per hard sub for single digit points. If you think that those five clears are responsible for the difference in our scaling so be it. The way you describe it was confusing, but from what I understand you did the highest level node early on 5 times and then you never went back to it right? That is, it should've gone up some more in levels after you do your essentials since you're clearing more, but you didn't take account of the increased levels because you there's only one stack left, right? If I did the highest level node first I don't think I'd have seen anything past 325 either.
Colognoisseur wrote: No I played it right as it opened clearing all six nodes once. Hard sub first, easy sub second Then I played it eight hours later clearing the five repeatable nodes, once. Hard sub first easy sub second Then with 90 minutes to go, after having played the easy sub down to baseline, I played the hard sub starting with the three non-essentials in order five times City I then five times City II, then five times City III, then five times the lower scoring Deadpool essential and then five times the higher scoring Deadpool essential. I did that every hard sub for the entire event. I always finished on the hard nodes because that would give me the most points.
JCTthe3rd81 wrote: I'll post my situation and let all you guys/gals take from it what you will . I have 2 accounts/rosters. One for hardcore play, the second is casual. My main roster has over 115 characters that are leveled pretty high. A 200 Xforce, 192 Thorette, 166 Steve Rogers, 164 Hood, 160 Hulk. You get the idea. My second roster has a few maxed 2*s and a Hulk around level 100. From my personal experiences, I can tell you all, there IS a difference. A BIG difference.
LXSandman wrote: Hey Guys, I can say for certain that character levels do effect scaling in some way. Here is what happened to me. I was very new, all my characters were around 40 so the levels of the PVE opponents were quite low. I didn't have the essential character for most of the PVE (SG), as soon as I hit the progression reward and got her on my squad she was right around the same lvl as everyone else... but because she was buffed for the event she turned out to be significantly higher then everyone else on my roster. As soon as I attempted to do the same node I had just completely before getting her I noticed that the enemy levels had immediately gone up ~30 lvls. LXSandman
stowaway wrote: JCTthe3rd81 wrote: I'll post my situation and let all you guys/gals take from it what you will . I have 2 accounts/rosters. One for hardcore play, the second is casual. My main roster has over 115 characters that are leveled pretty high. A 200 Xforce, 192 Thorette, 166 Steve Rogers, 164 Hood, 160 Hulk. You get the idea. My second roster has a few maxed 2*s and a Hulk around level 100. From my personal experiences, I can tell you all, there IS a difference. A BIG difference. One argument is that your hardcore account is hardcore, and therefore your personal scaling has built way up. I have three accounts: home computer (main), work computer (ha!), and phone (rarely played). I took the game on vacation with me during the Star Lord event and won two covers with a roster that didn't even have a fully leveled ONE star character. My go-to gal and highest level character was a single-cover level 70 goddess. Scaling went up during the event, but not enough to keep me from getting two Star Lords with a roster that can barely do the hardest nodes in the Prologue. Edit: I'm sure I was in an ultra noob bracket. And I was on vacation, so I din't really grind that hard. But the levels stayed fairly low even when I did well.
Arondite wrote: A good argument can be made that, in PvE, you're supposed to be on equal footing with the 2 star players.
JCTthe3rd81 wrote: Like I said, this is just my personal experience. And I alone am not a definitive answer either way, but a single sample, I can only state my own observations from playing the game and let others take from it what they wish. <snip!> Do I have to play harder on my main account because the game is harder because my characters are higher levels? .... OR .... Is the game harder because I play harder? Like I said, I play both rosters daily about the same, but there is a huge difference. Now I've confused myself . I think I need a nap now, my head hurts.
simonsez wrote: Arondite wrote: A good argument can be made that, in PvE, you're supposed to be on equal footing with the 2 star players. I don't know if it'd be a "good" argument. Seems like poor game design. There are a lot of players who don't care for PvP at all, because of all the stress associated with sniping and shield-hopping, and because it feels way more P2W than PvE. You'd be basically telling those players "Don't bother trying to get a stronger roster, because it's not going to help you at all in PvE, since all rosters are meant to be equal"
papa07 wrote: simonsez wrote: Arondite wrote: A good argument can be made that, in PvE, you're supposed to be on equal footing with the 2 star players. I don't know if it'd be a "good" argument. Seems like poor game design. There are a lot of players who don't care for PvP at all, because of all the stress associated with sniping and shield-hopping, and because it feels way more P2W than PvE. You'd be basically telling those players "Don't bother trying to get a stronger roster, because it's not going to help you at all in PvE, since all rosters are meant to be equal" I have always seen it as PvE is a reward for effort where PvP is a reward for development. Your progression in the game is from Prologue to PvE to PvP. If there was a Meta for PvE like the current XF/4Thor in PvP, how would anyone start the transition to 3star land? This is not a perfect game design by any standards, by for developing rosters, it is a well thought out plan.
Phantron wrote: papa07 wrote: simonsez wrote: Arondite wrote: A good argument can be made that, in PvE, you're supposed to be on equal footing with the 2 star players. I don't know if it'd be a "good" argument. Seems like poor game design. There are a lot of players who don't care for PvP at all, because of all the stress associated with sniping and shield-hopping, and because it feels way more P2W than PvE. You'd be basically telling those players "Don't bother trying to get a stronger roster, because it's not going to help you at all in PvE, since all rosters are meant to be equal" I have always seen it as PvE is a reward for effort where PvP is a reward for development. Your progression in the game is from Prologue to PvE to PvP. If there was a Meta for PvE like the current XF/4Thor in PvP, how would anyone start the transition to 3star land? This is not a perfect game design by any standards, by for developing rosters, it is a well thought out plan. Where on earth do people get the idea that PvP is supposed to be superior to PvE especially in terms of quality? All the enemy you face on the high end of PvE are vastly stronger than anything you'll ever fight in PvP. If there isn't an artificial mechanism like shields that prop up your score in PvP, your progression in PvP would basically end as soon as you hit max 3*s because at that point nobody could possibly pull ahead of others meaningfully if nobody in the game can have shields. I think people complain a bit too much about competitive PvE. In a game like WoW, you can see statistics show only a certain % of the population can beat some raid and that number is unlikely to go up over time without inflation. That is not fundamentally different from if WoW instead ran some kind of 'competitive PvE' and only the same top % can get the raid gear. As long as that event measures PvE skills similar to a raid, you'd still expect the same guys to finish at the top %. Now of course to address people complaining about this being unfair there is inflation in WoW versus none in MPQ, but it can take a long time before inflation kicks in and games like WoW work fine even if a large % of the overall population can never get the top X% stuff. Of course WoW actually has things you can do besides going for the top X%, while MPQ does not (maybe the dailys address some of it, but it's still not nearly enough), but that's a problem with a lack of content.